The camera, an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

In 1940, an image was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art: Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. At the time, DOROTHEA LANGE was working as a photographer for a Depression-era government agency. She was born in Hoboken (New Jersey, U.S), into a May day, 1895, becoming American documentary photographer. She had encountered a desperate mother that with her childrens had been living on vegetables from the surrounding field.

In New York City, she studied photography at Columbia University. Then, she decided to travel around the world, earning money as she went by selling her photographs. During the Great Depression, DOROTHEA LANGE began to photograph the unemployed men who wandered the streets of San Francisco. Her images had bring the conditions of the rural poor to the public’s attention. Her photographs of migrant workers were presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves.

After her first exhibition was held in 1934, her reputation as a documentary photographer was firmly established. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, in 1942 she recorded the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans to detention camps. After World War II, DOROTHEA LANGE created a number of photo-essays for Life magazine. She traveled the world, photographically documenting countries throughout and South America. In 1965, she spent much of her time working on a retrospective exhibition of her work to be at MoMA the following year. She died in San Francisco (California), into an October day, 1965.